Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine. Vol. 50, No. 1 & 2, January/February 2005

“No, no, Gilbert,” he said, waving away my argument with his chubby fingers. “I know this Fed from Boston. I’d been talking to him, told him I thought I could give him Tiago on a silver platter. And, y’know, with Tiago on the State’s mobster first team, he said there might be some kind of reward involved. Though getting that bastard, Tiago D. Costa, woulda been plenty enough for me.”

Ah, now it made sense. Victor had never talked about it, at least not to me, his kid cousin. But being a classmate of Tiago D. Costa, from grade one through high school, must have taken quite a toll on my chubby, camera-toting cousin.

But no blackmail? Then what the hell had Tiago been talking about?

“What went wrong?”

“I don’t know, Gilbert, I just don’t know. I had that mini-cam working for seven nights from ten until six in the morning, with a feed of the video into a machine up in Vo’s apartment where it was saved onto eight-hour tapes. I’d go over there, have lunch with Vo and check the tapes. Nothing, nothing, nothing. Then this morning, maybe four o’clock, Vo called me, said someone had smashed up the shrine, taken the camera. She said she thought she saw some guy with a sledgehammer leaving her yard over the back fence and going into the Ace through the back door. Then she must’ve called you.”

“And you’re sure there was nothing on the tapes.”

“No, swear to God. It was the same boring thing night after night. People coming and going until closing, a few workers leaving after that, then Tiago, then nothing but a dog or a cat showing up every now and then. You know how stakeouts are, lots and lots of the same boring nothing happening. At least with these I could fast-forward.”

“They all looked the same, huh?”

“Yeah, you know how it is.”

I thought about it for a while before saying, “I think I do. I’ve got to make another visit to the perp.”

Victor nodded sagely, though I’d used the word as a joke.

“Gonna go back and have a little sit-down with Tiago D.?” he asked.

“Tiago? No, Victor, not even close.”

“You holding Vo’s shotgun, Vo?”

She opened the door, frowning up at my caution. But I noticed that the Remington was within easy reach.

The coffee pot was just beginning to perk, so she must have seen me from her front window. I sat at her table, and she brought a plate covered with a white cloth which she whipped off like a magician, showing freshly baked raisin squares beneath.

“You sent a tape to Tiago D. Costa, didn’t you, Vo?” I said, feeling so guilty to be accusing her that I ignored the raisin squares, though I knew she’d made them as a kind of payoff for me.

“Gilbert! What on earth are you talking about?” she said. Her white brows were knit with confusion, but beneath them her dark eyes gave her away. Now that I knew my guess had been right, and it was just a matter of time, I felt okay taking a raisin square.

“I think you know,” I said. “It had to be you. Tiago mentioned a tape, not tapes, like he’d already seen one. Victor had no clue how Tiago found out he was being taped. In fact, all the tapes Victor saw were worthless, nothing for Tiago to get upset about. That leaves you, Vo.”

“But why would I do that?” she said.

“Actually,” I said around bites of juicy raisins, “that’s the question I really want answered.”

I probably should have also told her that Tiago was willing to back off Victor, but that might take away what little leverage I had.

I watched my grandmother get up, walk over to the back window, and head cocked to one side, stare down toward the Bathtub Mary in the far corner of her yard, then over to the left, toward the cross on the top of Our Lady of Fatima.

“When did you get him on tape?” I said quietly.

“The second night,” she whispered, her eyes fixed, her confession aimed toward her church. “It was clear as day, Gilbert, those lowlifes bringing packages into the Ace at three fifteen in the morning.”

“But Victor never saw that tape.”

She shook her head, but the corner of her mouth was turned up in a small, satisfied smile.

“You ran the first night’s tape again and told him it was from the second night?”

He had actually given me the answer himself when he said the nothing-happening tapes had all looked the same.

“I love Victor,” she said, shaking her head as she added, “but sometimes I think he’s not cut out for that job. He didn’t even notice the date on the tape was the same.”

“You made a copy of the tape you sent Tiago D., right?”

“See?” she said, a big smile lighting her face as she turned to look at me. “Now you, querido, are in the right profession!”

“Where is it, Vo?”